Oxbridge has long been accused of creating a select old-boys network, feeding graduates directly into the upper echelons of the political power centres. But in France, the elite system of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, known as ENA, has given the word egalité within higher education a hollow sound, making Oxbridge look like a rather slack polytechnic in comparison. Known as the most prestigious of the French grandes écoles, the school has recently seen its future existence seriously questioned.

A recent ENA graduate calls the rigorous final exam system brutal, while a committee set up by Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, presented a series of proposals last month to the French cabinet, suggesting a removal of the guarantee of influential civil service posts for ENA graduates. As part of the reforms, the school will be centred entirely at Strasbourg from 2005, moving it away from the political power centres in Paris.

Despite the fact that ENA produced two French Presidents, six of the Country's last eight Prime Ministers, the current Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dominique de Villepin as well as a large bulk of France's top civil servants, some of the school's most outspoken critics are its own former students, the énarques themselves. Bernard Zimmern, an énarque who went on to form the conservative think-tank IFRAP, Institut Francais de Recherche sur les Adminstrations Publiques, says that ENA is a school that was created for a different era, "an era that needed a strong state at a time when it was necessary to create a state administration that united the country's elite".

When de Gaulle founded ENA in 1945, the idea was to break the upper-classes' control of the top postings of the civil service and prevent nepotism. But while 29% of ENA students came from working-class backgrounds in 1950, the figure has shrunk to 9% today. Research published by the Ecole Normale Superiere show that parents are typically CEOs or senior civil servants.

According to Nicholas Lecaussin, editor of the IFRAP publication; Societé Civile, ENA reforms proposed by the government are merely superficial measures: "The ENA must be shut down entirely; it does not make any sense today. It is incredibly expensive and actually plays a harmful role in society.

"It has created an administrative elite, a class of mandarins. No other Western society has a school like this, it is the kind of thing you find in Japan. But even in Japan schools are not as elitist as the ENA."

One of Lecaussin's main objections against the school is that the énarques are automatically granted influential posts in government ministries and large institutions without having specialist knowledge of economics and business administration. Instead, he proposes, France should permit more privately run business schools. "The énarques have become nobility in France and that is what we have to do away with," Lecaussin concludes.

A recent ENA graduate currently working in the Ministry of Finance says that he didn't actually learn much academically at the school. "There were some great extracurricular activities - I took Arabic lessons and sport - but as for the actual academic subjects, it was mainly rehashing what I already knew from my political science studies."

Students spend up to two years preparing for the ENA entrance exam. Only 120 are granted a place, but once accepted they receive around £700 a month from the state to cover living expenses. The taught components are international relations and administrative law, dealt with in the form of case studies.

However, it is the grueling final exams, determining which of the 120 students will be among the 10 best able to pick and choose from top government postings available, that give the students sleepless nights. One graduate summed this up: "There is a lot of pressure to succeed, because the results so determine what you will end up doing.

"Before, if you did poorly, you risked being stuck in some regional state department for the rest of your life, but I think the system is opening up a little bit now. It is becoming easier to move from one department to another."

An ENA diploma obliges the graduates to work within the civil service for at least five years. After that, they are free to move into the private sector, an area that today hoovers up a large percentage of the top students. Already three students from the 2002 batch have left the civil service for the private sector. If they do not return, they must pay the state back.

A study from the CNRS, Centre National de Recherche Scientifique revealed that half of the chairmen of France's top 200 companies are from ENA.

In a recent article in Societé Civile, Bernard Zimmern, claims that ENA is at fault for scooping up the brightest graduates and forcing them to stay within public administration. They should rather be directed towards private enterprises, says Zimmern, because that it where the future is. Whether this is beneficial for France or not, it looks like it is already happening.